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Squarespace Coupons, Reviews, Comparisons and Alternatives

About Squarespace

So you want to build a webpage. Maybe it’s a blog. Maybe it’s a site for your small business. Maybe it’s a portfolio for your artwork.

In any case, you have options. A lot of them, including WordPress, Movable Type, Tumblr, Virb, Weebly, and a variety of niche sites that cater to specific use-cases and communities.

Today the company is unveiling Squarespace 7 — a totally reworked version of its platform that has big enough ambitions to justify its ample funding. The new version of the service is in a strict friends-and-family private beta for now, but it’s giving users a first glimpse at what they can expect as it opens up more broadly in the weeks ahead.

Squarespace integrates with Stripe and more than 16 other solutions. View details

Support Options

FAQs

Knowledge Base

Online Support

Phone Support

Video Tutorials

On premises Support

Ratings Summary

Relative performance in

Metric

Score

Rank

cloudswave Score

81

#3

Domain Authority

88

#3

Alexa Rank

694

#1

Facebook

0

#0

Twitter

0

#0

Google+

0

#0

Integration

69

#4

Security

0

#0

Support options

77

#3

Platforms

90

#2

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We constantly strive to verify the reliability and trustworthiness of our data sources in order to help you make the best software selection decision. Ratings are also strictly independent from any kind of affiliation or commercial relationship with Cloudswave.

How to Get Your Squarespace Free Trial

Established in 2004, Squarespace is a US-Based content management system (CMS) that is composed of a hosting, blogging, and website builder service. The platform allows businesses and individuals to set up their own website and maintain them. In a period of 11 years, the brand has managed to grow to 441 employees and has more than 1 million active users. It has also won numerous awards from Forbes, Fortune Magazine and Time.com and Crain’s New York. Do you plan on using Squarespace to create your own website? If so, follow these simple steps to get your Squarespace free trial for 14 days.

Step 1:

Enter https://www.squarespace.com/ in the URL of your browser. You will be displayed with the page above. Click on the ‘Get Started’ option (highlighted in blue).

Step 2:

Upon clicking on the ‘Get Started’ Option, you will be taken to following ‘Template’ page. Choose the template you like best and which suits your business’ style.

Step 3:

Once you have selected the right template, you will see the following page. To ensure you are making the right decision, you can click on the LCD to gain a desktop view of how your website would look and on the mobile to gain a small-screen view. If you feel the template is a perfect fit for your business, click on the ‘Start with this Design’ option.

Step 4:

Upon clicking on the ‘Start with this Design’ option, you will be told to fill out the necessary information about your website. Enter your first name, last name, a valid email address, and unique password. Then click on the Sign up & Create Site option, and voila! You have just obtained a 14-day trial with customer service and no credit charge!

Step 5:

After your Squarespace free trial period is over, you will presented with three options to manage your website: Personal, Business, and Commerce. Choose one that best suits your business plan, enter credit card information, and enjoy using your own website!

ShipStation

Squarespace Review by Cloudswave

Do you have a business? Do you have something that you want to share with the world? If so, the best way to do that is with your own website. However, getting a website up and running on your own is not always an easy task. Those who do not know much about building a site and who have little to no experience with coding will certainly have a difficult time. Companies like Squarespace can help to make things quite a bit easier for you.

Squarespace has been taking the web world by storm over the past couple of years. They've increased their advertising, improved their offerings, and have quickly become one of the most popular website building tools available.

What Are the Main Benefits and Features?

One of the biggest benefits of using Squarespace comes from the ease of use. The help videos offered through the site can help to cut down on the already small learning curve. It's easy to see what you are editing, and to know how it will look on the screen once you are done. Users are able to edit different content sections on the page quickly and without needing to know anything about coding. The site offers some fantastic templates and images that you can use. The templates look great, and will make it easy for people to create sites that look great and that still have a unique appearance to them.

Currently, they have just over 30 different designer website templates available. This is far lower than what other web builder sites have available. However, it's not something that should be overly concerning, as you can do quite a few things to customize and adjust the template to make your site unique.

In addition the templates are responsive, so they will adjust their size based on the browser. This means that the content will look good no matter how the visitor is viewing the site. Since so many people today are using mobile devices to surf the web, this is essential. A site that doesn't account for mobile users will not have the same retention as a site that's mobile friendly.

There is a variety of different styling options and customizations with Squarespace that simply aren’t available with many of the other builders that are on the market. Some of the elements you can change quickly include the background images, spacing, sizes, image opacity, colors, and fonts. It seems like a simple thing, but the ease with which you can make these changes to customize your site really does make a difference.

If you want to get an ecommerce store up and running, Squarespace might just be the place to do it. They offer a number of different ecommerce tools that make getting an online store up and running simple. They make it easy to sell both digital and physical goods. You will also have tools to manage your inventory, print packing slips, process orders, and much more. Best of all, it is possible to do all of it through one interface.

One of the "hidden" elements of having a great site that your visitors will never realize is quality SEO. Squarespace is optimized for SEO functions, making it easy to create titles and descriptions for your website and your individual pages.

Many website builders offer a free version of their program. Generally, these free versions are laden with advertisements. Squarespace has a different approach. They do not have a free version available. However, they do offer a 14-day trial plan so you can try it out and see whether you like the system. You do not even have to provide them with a credit card for the free trial. If, at the end of the trial, you decide that you want to join, you will be able to choose from three different pricing tiers. We won't cover the pricing, as they are subject to change. However, we'll cover what's offered in each of the different plans.

What Do the Plans Offer?

The Personal Plan features 20 pages, galleries, and blogs. It has unlimited bandwidth and storage, and up to two people will be able to contribute to the site. It has fully integrated ecommerce, and will allow you to sell one product and to accept donations.

The next tier up is the Business Plan. This features unlimited pages, galleries, and blogs, as well as unlimited storage, bandwidth, and contributors. It also offers fully integrated ecommerce, and you will be able to sell up to 20 products. It features a developer platform, professional email through Google, and a $100 AdWords credit.

The top option is the Commerce Plan. As the name suggests, this is the best choice for those who want to start an ecommerce site. It offers unlimited pages, galleries, and blogs, as well as unlimited storage, bandwidth and contributors just like the Business Plan. It is fully integrated for ecommerce, you can sell unlimited products, and it offers real time carrier shipping. ShipStation offers label printing with this plan. You also receive professional email from Google, and $100 AdWords credit.

A Great Support System

One thing that will make or break any company, including one that offers a website builder, has to be the customer service. Squarespace offers live chat, and they have an amazing email turnaround time of just one hour. This extends beyond normal business hours, as they are very committed to making sure their customers are happy. No matter the time of day or night you contact the company, they endeavor to reply within an hour. If you have a work schedule that keeps you up at different hours than most others, this is extremely helpful.

In addition, they have a number of tutorials and videos online. These can make it easy to find answers for many of the questions you have about working with the system. Watching the videos will help you to get a better grasp of using the system as well.

Critic Reviews

Squarespace Use Cases and Deployment ScopeOur company, which is made up of a family of companies, uses Squarespace for our each of main websites. These are the first place anyone would look for information on our products. They contain all our contact information, product and installation information, downloads, images, maps and galleries. It ensures that all possible information on our companies and products is easily accessible and always available, both for our customers and our sales force. We currently have 5 different Squarespace sites, one for each of our companies. They are all linked together in a manager account and are easily edited and updated by the site manager and those who have editing credentials.

Pros : Galleries - These are robust and clean. Able to be edited to suit your needs and configured to show off the high quality images companies produce.Blogs - The blog feature is very developed. We do not utilize it in our companies, since we are less of a social product. But a good blog helps bring a personal feel directly to the consumers.Site development - As a novice html user, I can easily edit and maintain our sites without the need for costly web developers.

Cons : Images - Though the gallery function is robust and able to be customized, I find that when placing images directly on to page layouts, that the software often resizes or moves the image to suit the template. I often wish I could specify the image size directly with pixel dimensions to ensure that it does not move or resize itself, which can cause lower resolution images to look blurry.Sidebars - nearly all of Squarespace's current templates do NOT have the option for a sidebar included. This is

What do you like best?

I love how awesome the designs look. It is really easy to make a website tailored to your company without having to be knowledgable of tech software. I couldn't be happier with the way our website turned out. We can even track our website visits and help improve our SEO through Squarespace. And the best part: it's mobile responsive! Our site looks great on computers, tablets, and phones thanks to Squarespace.

What do you dislike?

I honestly can't think of a single thing I dislike about squarespace. Perhaps that is seems to take a little longer to load than most other sites (maybe because of the large pictures on our page?)

Recommendations to others considering the product

Squarespace was by far the best thing we did for our small business. I would definitely recommend using it. The best part is you can use the free trial if you just want to experiment with designs.

What business problems are you solving? What benefits have you realized?

We solved designing a crisp, clean, website that was mobile friendly. We also discovered how easy their eCommerce store was to use and to track inventory. It also helped us track our SEO and site traffic. We bought a subscription to design our website, and it ended up elevating our business ten folds.

If you are looking for a website building platform where you should get every feature to build an attractive website for yourself then SquareSpace is a good option for you. SquareSpace is one of the famous website building platforms that should provide you every kind of feature like templates, SEO, E-commerce, Webhosting and other necessary features in one place. So I will recommend this site to the users who need some beautiful looking website for their business.

User Reviews

Favorable

11 In total

5

4

4

7

Jennifer L Rieff

Squarespace is another option to pursue when investigating one's options for creating their own website. Squarespace offers already made templates, different galleries in which to search from for ideas; a professional blog to read if need for other ideas; as well as an online store to purchase different elements to make one's website complete. Squarespace also provides its elements to be mobile ready when someone is ready to create their own website. It boasts of the simplicity to create one's own website with the ability to just click and drag items to arrange content and add features all with the click of the mouse! According to its website, Squarespace is also national recognized and trusted by the following; SURFACE, Rodarte; lyft, tokyobike, Freemans, V Magazine, MAI; just to name a few.

Pros :

If you are a student who would like to create their own website.... you are given a 50% discount for the first year of having your website. There is also 24/7 award-winning customer service to help with creating their website.

The Squarespace website is created with modern browsers and mobile devices to ensure continuity with the latest HTML, CSS and Javascript technology.

One can make their own designs for their website utilizing Style Editor to personalize fonts, colors, and layouts.

Cons :

Upon entering the Squarespace website, it is simply stated to 'get started with your free trial today'. Further investigation indicated that until you decide that Squarespace is right for you......there is no charge. However, I would believe that after a certain amount of time (10-30 days, perhaps); there would be an email sent to push one to start paying for the website.

The pricing for creating a webpage with Squarespace is $12 for a personal website per month which is billed annually or $16 for a month-to-month charge.

To create a business website, it costs $18 per month billed annually or $26 month-to-month.

However, there is also a $5 charge to create a cover page which is either billed annually or $7 month-to-month charge.

There is also a separate charge by Stripe; which is the payment processor integrated with Commerce for processing chages.

July 6, 2016

Aquia Francisco

I love Squarespace. The simple of use alone makes it worth it. The platform is so intuitive and allows you to create beautiful, clean, seamless websites which I can appreciate. The support team is at your service and the resource they have available to answer questions or provide guidance is hands down the best around. In comparison to CMS's like WordPress, Squarespace simplifies content management. You don't have to be a web-developer to create a nice site or blog. When you compare it to sites like Wix, Squarespace takes the cake in that it looks so much more professional and has so many more customizable options.

Pros :

Ease of use. Squarespace is the most intuitive CMS platform I've used to date. The design is seamless, enabling users to easily navigate it and design a beautiful website.

Intuitive. Most of the layout and design options are pretty intuitive. And if there is something you can't figure out, they have a wealth of information and resources at your disposal. Their help page pretty much lays everything out and answers any questions you might have. And if it doesn't, or you somehow manage to mess things up, their support team is very responsive and helpful.

Cost. For the price, you get so much. You don't have to worry about hosting nor purchasing domains and email address from 3rd party websites. It's all in one place for a super efficient price.

Cons :

I think the only con that I can think of would be the limited number of templates and the ability to manipulate them. It would be really great to have more options and be able to customize the template beyond what they allow and being knowing CSS.

For example, if I choose a template, I'm pretty much limited to what I can do. So you might find yourself having an almost identical look and feel. Which is fine, but it would be nice to have more customization of templates. Other than that, I would say another con is when switching layouts, there isn't a way to design the whole site without it affecting your live site.

June 13, 2016

Sara Luisa Hincapie

I was a user of Squarespace last year when I set up a blog for my nuptials. I chose it over Wordpress and Wix because I needed something easy to set up and with an array of cleanly designed templates and a domain name (Squarespace gives a free domain name for one year with the purchase of a year of hosting)

Set up is great, the integrations are very easy, and almost anyone can understand the platform. You can customize almost anything just by using the CMS, but if you know how to write code, you will feel very hand tied to perform different tasks. What you see in the platform is what you get.

It's called the apple of CMS for a reason, the templates are very very well designed, you have templates for all sorts of things such as personal sites, Startups, SAAS companies, restaurants, etc. I feel that they could have more templates on the site as the monthly price is a bit high, but overall the ones they do have are great.

The statistics on Squarespace are decent (Nothing that wows me, to be honest) They are sort of jetpack but better designed. I stick to the always reliable Google Analytics on this one because I do not trust data from this analytics suite.

With live editing, you're able to customize your website as you look at it in a live preview this is something that I like too, the easiness that this feature gives.

Another thing to point out is the integration of the useful Google Apps and also something that I do not use but feel can be very valuable is the Getty Images integration.

Overall I would recommend this CMS is easy to use, the templates are nice, and a small business can benefit. What I personally think is not made for advanced users, and that is why I pick other platforms.

Pros :

Design.

Customizable templates.

Easiness.

Cons :

Price.

Analytics.

June 1, 2016

James McQuillin

I was sold on Squarespace at first sight. However, my free trial of Squarespace and free trial of 2 other services led me in a different direction. Truthfully, Squarespace seems to generate the most professional-looking websites, but the building interface seemed the most complex out of the three that I tried. I think for somebody with previous web design or web development experience, Squarespace is probably a great option. It also seemed to me that they have a strong focus on eCommerce which did not directly apply to me for my business and the website I wanted to design.

Pros :

Since I did not go beyond my free trial, I may not have fully experienced everything that Squarespace has to offer. However, I know for certain that if I had built a website using Squarespace, it would look very professional and very clean.

It seemed as if the Builder had a lot of options and a lot of ways to customize the website to reflect the exact design I desired, but it all was a little overwhelming for me as a first-time website builder.

If I were to build a new website now, I would want to try Squarespace again because I feel my experience with Wix and my trial with Weebly has built a foundation that might make my experience better the second time around.

Cons :

Well, the biggest downside for me was the complexity. For Squarespace, this may not be a true con because their service may be targeted toward people who have previous experience, thus making it the perfect solution for that target.

In my case, my business is teaching people how to use the basics of technology, not the advanced material such as web development. Since my web building experience was next to nothing, Squarespace was intimidating and I was worried since too much time would be taken to build a basic website I was looking for.andnbsp; andnbsp;

May 3, 2016

Tamer Desouki

I must say right off the bat that Squarespace is one of the best website builders I've ever used. Working in the advertising industry, I've come across many websites that truly are horribly built and make it virtually impossible to promote on the marketing side. What I find truly great about Squarespace is that anyone is able to jump in and get a sophisticated, professional-looking web page regardless of the individuals skill level. There are numerous templates to choose from and can be fully customizable to fit your particular needs.

In addition to having a great platform, the company helps users generate traffic to their newly built site by offering Search Engine Optimization. This one feature has helped many of my clients get their content seen by the masses and with the addition of paid advertising, they have seen their brand recognition skyrocket.

In terms of pricing and value, I must say that Squarespace is very appropriately priced. For instance, my blogging clients that are looking to promote their content on a professional web page, Squarespace charges a flat $8 per month with an annual subscription. This is the subscription option that I chose for myself as well. You get a free custom domain and mobile optimized website which alone is worth the subscription fee. Businesses that are looking for unlimited pages, bandwidth and has a slew of products to sell, that will set you back $18 per month with an annual subscription. There is no long-term commitments, and you can cancel anytime. I also love that they offer a free trial to in case you're hesitant. I gave them a try and loved it and have been a customer for several months.

Pros :

Squarespace offers a great visual tool to create professional and modern web pages.

The software is easy to use, and you have access to great 24/7 customer service.

Pricing is also very reasonable.

They bundle quite a bit of resourceful tools such as mobile optimization and a free custom domain.

Cons :

There were a few instances that things were not completely clear, and I needed to do a quick online search to figure it out. However, I could have also just called customer service to get my issue resolved.

March 26, 2016

Anonymous

Squarespace is easy to use and creates stunning websites a mini-stores quickly without programming knowledge or needing to pay a developer.

Pros :

They offer a free trial, so you can jump in and see if you like it before committing any dollars to it.

They pay more attention to the design of their templates than most of the website builder platforms out there do.

All of their themes are high-quality and look amazing.

It even provides some basic analytics information so that you can track your website visits and improve your SEO.

Cons :

Like most website builders, this is a great starting point for a business website, but if you reach a point where your site is a pivotal part of your online marketing, then you will have to rebuild your site on another platform later and start over.

December 8, 2015

Nick Thorsch

I've built a lot of client websites using SquareSpace. There are definitely some quirks to it, like how image blocks, spacing blocks, etc work and are used. Also customizations can take place in multiple areas: in the page, in custom CSS or in development mode.

Pros :

Relatively easy to use, once you figure out how to use it.

Fast customer support.

Great templates to choose from.

Cons :

Very quirky system, takes some getting used to and several emails with support to learn it.

November 30, 2015

Jonathan Hatch, MBA

Overall, I am happy with Squarespace. It's certainly not as feature-rich as Wordpress, but it's a lot easier to use. With features like Parallax scrolling and e-commerce widgets, Squarespace is a decent place to create a website in half the time as WordPress. Almost a drag and drop platform like Wix, but so much better. There are some quirks, but there are plenty of video tutorials out there to learn from. Plenty of templates to choose from, but not too many....which is good!

Pros :

Faster than WordPress.

No coding needed since SquareSpace manages the backend, but there is room for custom CSS and HTML to a degree.

Cons :

Not as customizable as Wordpress sites.

Can be a bit tricky at first, but when you get the hang of it, it's not so bad.

November 17, 2015

Anonymous

My first impression of Squarespace was through interacting with their website before deciding to sign up. Their website is extremely user-friendly, allowed me to take a tour, view dashboards and templates, look at FAQs, and even look at other websites that users have made through their software. After signing up, the steps were listed out for me, and everything was so user-friendly. There were prompts that led me from one thing to the next and setting up my website was actually a lot smoother than I thought. As someone who has no prior experience in HTML or coding anything, I needed something that was English and easy to understand. With Squarespace I never once felt like I was reading foreign language. It doesn't take a lot of knowledge to be able to navigate through this website and building your own. I was able to edit and preview my website before deciding that was the option I wanted to go with. I will say some of the capabilities were more challenging to use than others and didn't necessarily function like they were advertised on the website or shown on other sites, but with the number of options they offered it was easy to figure out something else to use or troubleshoot around the problem. My favorite thing about their templates is how clean and modern most of them are; they look like though they could be professionally done, which is nice because I am not a professional web developer. The price may be considered on the steep side for what it is, I've seen others do some really nice websites through tools like Wordpress and Tumblr, but for someone who does not really have a lot of knowledge when it comes to building a website and having it look professional it was worth it. Not sure this is a subscription I will keep (I paid for a year) simply because I don't know if I will have the need to continue using it. If I were a designer/artist/photographer/etc., that was constantly updating and relying on my website, this would be a great service, though.

Pros :

Beautiful templates to choose from.

The builder dashboard is extremely comprehensive with a lot of options.

Support was always quick to reply and extremely helpful answering any questions I had.

Capabilities of what you could add to your personal website were very cool.

I used it to create my online portfolio and it worked well for what I wanted it to be.

Cons :

Price. I'm not totally sure that the price is worth what it is for. I have seen others make extremely cool websites on free outlets such as wordpress. They're a lot more tech savvy than me, so that did play a role in my decision making, but not totally sure price is worth it.

While support was great and quick to reply, everything was email based. There were times I would have loved to pick up a phone and call someone so they could walk me through everything step by step.

November 11, 2015

John Gregory

SquareSpace or Wordpress (.com or .org)? I chose SquareSpace based on my interactions with them over and above the platform. They appear customer focussed, responsive and eager to grow your business and their own. The ability to customize almost any aspect of the style is brilliant and allows small ongoing tweaks as feedback on a site is received.

Pros :

The step-by-step video tutorials are superb as are the how-to-guides on the templates.

SquareSpace has responded to questions posted through social media, even over weekends in double quick time with valuable links even to others websites.

I have successfully integrated both HubSpot's freemium Leadin and MailChimp.

The templates are responsive and follow the inbound methodology best practices.

The platform is intuitive and close enough to other applications to be logical.

The designs are all responsive and clean. The examples of other sites using that design template provide great inspiration. You can also change the design in the future without rebuilding the entire site. This is great, so you don't feel stuck with a website design if your needs grow or attitudes change.

Cons :

I would like to have used Yoast or an equivalent. Still looking!

While SquareSpace may have less plug-ins than Wordpress it appears to have all the key ones and I am sure these will grow over time in response to their [SquareSpace] customer experience feedback.

If you have previously bought your domain elsewhere the set-up between your domain provider and SquareSpace is a little fiddly, however again SquareSpace provided online technical support, and it was resolved in less than a day.

Alternatives to Squarespace

The following are some of the most common questions inquisitive potential users have about Squarespace.

Question: What Type of People Are Using Squarespace?

The site building tool has proved to be useful for bloggers, writers, designers, small businesses, online shops, musicians, and those who want a site for a special occasion. It has the options and potential to work well for many different people.

Question: Do I Need to Download Squarespace?

You do not download Squarespace. This is an all web solution that you create and manage right on the web.

Question: Will I Need a Separate Host?

When you build your site through Squarespace, you will not have to worry about finding a host for your site. They will host your website for you.

Question: Can I Export My Site?

One of the things that help to separate Squarespace is that they will allow you to export your site if you want to leave. However, they currently only provide you with the option to export the site to WordPress.

Question: Can I Switch Plans?

You are able to switch plans at any time via the website manager. Depending on the cost of the new plan, you will receive a refund or a prorated charge.

Is Squarespace Right for You?

Are you trying to build a professional looking website without going through the massive cost and hassle of working with a website developer? If you are, then website building solutions such as Squarespace can be an ideal solution. You can create truly beautiful, high-quality looking websites quickly and easily with the system. It has a number of advantages, and it could be a good choice for you. As always though, you should check some of the other website building options out there to see whether Squarespace is the best choice for your web development needs.

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